Google I/O 2017 – What’s New?

Google I/O (simply I/O) is an annual developer conference held by Google in San Francisco, California. I/O showcases technical in-depth sessions focused on building the web, mobile, and enterprise applications with Google and open sources such as Android, Chrome and Chrome OS, APIs, Google Web Toolkit, App Engine, and more.

Google I/O was inaugurated in 2008 and is organised by the executive team. “I/O” stands for input/output, as well as the slogan “Innovation in the Open”.

Google I/O 2017 took place from 17 May-19 May. After a big, long, two-hour keynote here are the bits of news that are actually worth knowing about.Companies CEO, Sundar Pichai addressed and started the event by introducing new products and shared more information about the company’s “AI first” future. Here’s a running list of what has been revealed:

Android Surpasses 2 Billion Monthly Active Devices

Android’s mobile dominance hasn’t stopped growing. CEO Sundar Pichai revealed at the keynote’s start that the tally of monthly active Android devices now exceeds 2 billion. The monthly users include smartphones, tablets, Android Wear devices, Android TVs, and any other number of other gadgets that are running on Android.

Google Lens

Google Lens is a new set of vision-based computing capabilities. It will be part of the Google Photos app in the future as well and the Assistant. Essentially you can point Google Lens at an object and it will understand what that represents. It could be a WiFi password, which the phone will be able to recognize and thus help a user log in immediately.

Android O Beta Version

Google announced its upcoming version of operating system in April, Android O (Predicted as Oreo). The Beta version will available for download on Nexus and Pixel Devices from today. Android O will give its users more enhanced features like improved notifications, picture-in-picture, better battery life and more.

Smart Reply System

All Gmail users are now able to use a machine learning system that reads messages and suggests replies. For instance, if a question is asked within an email the system will recommend a response. The feature was first launched on Google Inbox but has now been expanded. The smart reply system will be available on the iOS and Android Gmail apps.

Google Assistance for Apple Devices

Google Assistant is expanding beyond Android to iOS. Even after the presence of SIRI, Google Assistant will be a standalone app on iPhone and iPad, offering many of the same functions as what we’ve seen it do on Google’s own operating system. You don’t have to wait long to try it, either; it’s available starting today.

Google Jobs

Google has built a new Jobs feature in search, which will show results around job search. This will be available in the US right now. Google will know where you’re searching from and show jobs in your area.

Google Home

Google Home is getting the power to give you notifications. Instead of just waiting for you to ask it things, the Home will be able to light up when it has something it thinks you want to know, like a traffic alert, messages, weather report etc. It won’t just shout it out though; you’ll need to ask it what’s up first. Google Home is also getting the power to send things to your phone or Chromecast.

All-New Google Photo

The app will now recommend that you share photos you’ve taken with people that it recognizes as being in the shot. Google calls this Suggested Sharing. It’s also introducing Shared Libraries, which allow families to collectively add images to a central collection more easily.

Google’s new AI chip for Cloud Storage

Google has introduced the second version of its Tensorflow Processing Unit, or TPU called the Cloud TPU. That’s the hardware it uses for Tensorflow, its open-source machine learning software, which developers can use to build their own AI-powered tools and apps.

Virtual Reality Headsets

Google confirmed it was working on wireless, self-contained headsets and that they’d be launched in ‘late 2017’. Google added it is working with both HTC and Lenovo on two headsets but that’s about all the company has revealed. There’s no pricing, specifications, or even pictures of the VR headsets yet.